No Excuses

Even if the vote in Ohio goes Bush’s way, then perhaps justice can still be had. Because now you Republicans have no excuse for failure. You’ve had four years of your own kind of governance. If things are no better or are worse after four more years of Bush’s leadership, who could you pin the blame on? If Iraq collapses for any reason, if any draft whatsoever comes about, if Bush’s highly irresponsible tax cuts drive up inflation or interest rates, there won’t be a strong democratic presence in the government to blame it on.

I'm not happy about it. I didn't oppose Bush because I was a Democrat. I opposed Bush because he really did screw things up. He really did wage a war for reasons that were invalidated the moment we showed up and saw the real evidence. He really did let Osama go, and most galling of all, declare that his capture was no longer important. He really did expand the War on Terror to be a reign of terror over the American people.

He never asked us for a sacrifice, never acted as if we were really in a time of war, where politics, pork, and programs would be less important that solid substantive results in fighting the enemy. He left us defenseless and lacking in awareness in a war where our enemy's main talent is for slipping past security and subverting our free society's unsecured systems.

Loyalty oaths trump freely given and accepted allegiance, homogenous support and patronage trumps access for all. Bush has come closer to becoming a truly imperial president than any in history, and his actions bear watching. He is a man isolated by his administration's structure and his penchant for secrecy

Bush will not get any relief from the opposition he faced this time around. If you think the rage you people saw was bad this time, let's see how you like the next four years, with half the country knowing their government will not do what they think needs to be done. This nation will remain badly divided - this was no landslide, though a better showing than last time.

And this will be an election that one half of the country won by saying the worst things about the other, by ignoring the facts on the ground for one issue or another. I don't think it will be if, but instead a matter of when the hubris of this Administration comes back to haunt, party, nation and citizen.

And maybe that fact will sink in to many around us, among the citizens of this nation, that Bush created all these problems on the watch of an undivided country, that a united front was not enough to prevent our difficulties from multiplying overseas, that damage is being done that will be years in the unmaking, if ever. One party, historically speaking, has never dominated politics for too long before become rife with divisions, sometimes throwing people over to the other party.

I do not look on the next few years with hope, should Bush be made president once more. If he stays out of touch with reality the way he did this last term, ugly consequences will come of it. The worst has come to pass, and few will be spared its consequences.

Hopefully, the excesses and troubles of the next few years will improve the nation's respect for fact, for actions taken on evidence and not mere suspicion propped up by bias. Hopefully, we will become more pragmatic and skeptical of a country, our nation more a part of the Reality-Based Community, less a part of the Bush as messianic leader camp. You know the old line "In God we Trust, all others must pay cash?" Well, I'd say I already follow a man with messianic purpose, and the Son of God already has the job nicely in hand, thank you very much. Maybe others will come to see that Bush is not deserving of the idolatry that the evangelical community has bestowed upon him, not deserving of such unskeptical support. Maybe they'll see that trust in the authorities of this world is misplaced as they send their children overseas to die in the Middle East.

Am I bitter? Yes, because I have real reason to fear this day, to fear that we would get fooled again, that once more, we had this opportunity to stop this march towards disaster, and we as a nation didn't take it.